Radical Responsibility

An excerpt from my personal journal on the 15th November 2022:

"It's an interesting thing thinking about radical responsibility when it comes to birth. In the medical system, the 'responsibility' falls to the medical staff - and so birthing gets pushed out of rural and regional hospitals, and birth is labelled as unsafe, and birth becomes this feared and over-medicalised process - all because the system is taking on full responsibility for the so-called dangers.

But what if the interventions do more harm than good? What if the travel is not ideal for a heavily pregnant woman, or a brand new baby? What if not every baby and birth needs 'saving' from every potential disaster all at once?

What if the mother chooses to take responsibility for her own birth experience? Why is that seen as such a dangerous thing to do?

It's socially acceptable to rock up to the hospital and 'push your baby out,' (or not, as is too often the case), and it's seen as our responsibility to put ourselves in that place at that time. Yet it's not quite so socially acceptable to take full responsibility for our own birthing experience; we're expected to shift that ownership of responsibility at the most critical moment, often while in active labour!

I think it's one of those things that once you come into that awareness, you can't un-know it. For me, I knew I would have to take radical responsibility for my birth whatever I ended up choosing; I could no longer go back to that place of passing on responsibility to a care provider.

In my mind, I could either choose freebirth, and the life or death responsibility that comes with that decision; or I could choose a hospital birth, and ultimately be responsible for the outcome (and potential trauma) that I would take away from that experience. Either way, I would be 100% responsible for what happened - or what I allowed to happen to me.

That realisation helped me step up and claim responsibilty in my freebirth - it was my body, my baby, my choice and my outcome. And all of a sudden I could no longer willingly put myself in a circumstance that brought so much fear and uncertainty (hospital birth), and so I stepped out of fear, and into my power as a strong, birthing woman.

*Cue 'I am Unstoppable' by Sia"

I journalled this while I was writing my birth story, and it didn't seem to quite fit in to my previous blogs, but I still wanted to share as I think it's a really important conversation!

I see the responsibility piece come up quite often, in regards to taking ownership of your life, doing the do, starting today and think of where you'll be in a year... Et cetera, et cetera. But then when it comes to birth, one of the most significant things a woman can do in her lifetime, there's just crickets...

I'm obsessed with birth stories lately, I'm constantly reading them (gotta love the algorithm, like 95% of my feed at the moment is about birth and babies!) The beautiful stories take me straight back to how I felt during late pregnancy, labour, birth, and early postpartum; and then there's the other stories. The ones with verbiage like "they did this to me," "then they had to do this." THEN. THEY. DID. It breaks my heart. I see women being cut even though they didn't want that. I see babies being taken away immediately after birth to be 'saved.' I see women either giving up the power, or having their power taken from them; and I see the responsibility being passed on to the medical staff. Because at least THEY made sure the baby was alright.

So when do mother's start seeing these outcomes as their own responsibility? Yes, some labours and births need medical assistance (32 week emergency C section baby here; I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for medical assistance), and yes, some babies need medical help after birth. But there's a lot of grey area, where the medical staff 'take' the responsibility, but the mother's are left to process the outcomes. When will the responsibility be given back to women?

It's maybe something that each woman has to come to realise in her own time. I know that if I had ended up in hospital with Willow's birth, I would have been able to claim responsibilty for the outcomes because I had already come into that responsibility prior; and if we had needed to go to hospital I would have felt like it was truly necessary in that moment. But the average societal expectation is that you go to a hospital to birth your baby so that the doctors and midwives can make sure everything goes good, and that just doesn't sit right with me.

It's taken me a long time to come around to share this blog, and I guess there's a part of me that worries about offending someone ... but let's have a conversation: what does radical responsibility mean for you? Particularly when it comes to birth??

*Pic is of immediately following Willow's birth; icepack on vulva, toast in hand, cord still attached to the placenta. Together we landed in that moment as a family of 3.